In U.S. Pat. No. 4,349,067, assigned to the assignee of this application, there is disclosed a machine for continuously casting battery grids. The machine generally consists of a cylindrical drum having the battery grid pattern machined as a cavity on the surface thereof and a shoe extending around a small circular segment of the drum and having a lead passageway therein. Molten lead directed into the passageway is caused to flow into the grid cavity on the drum through an orifice slot communicating with the lead passageway extending across the grid cavity on the drum. While the machine disclosed in the aforementioned patent has been used successfully for casting battery grids, experience has shown that, after the machine has been operated for a short period of time, it has to be stopped because the quality of the grids being cast begins to deteriorate. This decrease in quality results from incomplete filling of the cavity grooves in the drum, flashing between and around the cast wires of the grid, dross inclusion in the grid wires, etc. It is believed that these problems arise primarily because of the non-uniform temperature of the molten lead along the length of the orifice slot in the shoe.